ATTENTION & THE EARTH
April 23rd - May 7th, 2026
n the 1960s, a broad coalition of activists responded to the mounting destruction of the natural environment with a slogan of ECOLOGY NOW!, the tagline for a political movement that recognized the material interdependence of human and non-human life. Now, in the 2020s, the rise of another extractive industry is driving a parallel paradigm shift, one concerned not with the "outer" environment of air and water, but with the "inner" environment of the mind and senses. Its rallying cry? ATTENSITY NOW!
This seminar positions human fracking and climate crisis as interrelated threats to human existence in the twenty-first century. To explore the material and metaphorical relationships between attention activism and environmental politics, we will draw on texts by Rob Nixon, Zadie Smith, Traci Brynne Voyles, and others. Through group discussions and practices, we'll seek to develop a vocabulary and framework for joint efforts at the nexus of attention activism and ecological repair.
Thursdays, 6:45 - 9:15pm EST
April 23rd-May 7th
55 Washington St. in DUMBO
Image Credit: Summer Wagner
WALKING & THINKING
23 August, 2025
Many great thinkers have been great walkers, too. From Thoreau to Virginia Woolf to James Baldwin, walking has been a source of intellectual inspiration – and also a unique way of thinking that brings together mind and body, interior life and exterior geography, individual and public.
For this moving study, we’re going to WALK – from the SoRA headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn, to Fort Tryon Park at the northern tip of Manhattan – and THINK together, on a range of texts (to be read in advance) by Thoreau, Rebecca Solnit, James Baldwin, and beyond.
Our goal? To explore the embodied nature of thinking, to theorize and practice modes of collective study that take place on the move, and to consider the role of walking & thinking, together, in Attention Activism.
TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER
June 16th - June 30th, 2025
Before there was climate science, there was weather: the sky in motion, the scent of ozone, a sudden shift in wind. Weather has always been humanity's default object of collective attention—shared but unstable, felt but hard to hold. It touches the skin, disturbs the mood, alters behavior. But in the age of crisis, weather becomes something else: a signal, a symptom, a site of conflict between what we perceive and what we know.
This seminar explores how we move from lived sensation to planetary sense-making. Where does individual experience end and shared understanding begin? How can individual perceptions of weather drive collective mobilization around climate? And what kind of attention is needed to cross that gap?
Drawing from meteorology, mythology, and media ecology, we’ll investigate how people have historically made meaning from the air around them—and how today’s fragmented weather awareness might be re-stitched into a new civic capacity. Through readings, experimental practices, and collective discussion, we’ll develop tools for attention activism: ways of seeing, naming, and responding to atmospheric change as both personal and political.
No expertise is required—only a willingness to look up. Join us as we ask: what are we really talking about when we talk about the weather?
Classes on Mondays, 6:45 - 9:15pm EST
June 16 - June 30
55 Washington St. in DUMBO